Are garages CRAP?

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boristhespie
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Are garages CRAP?

Post by boristhespie »

Okay I know not all garages are crap, but finding a good one seems to be incredibly tough and usually miles away (well up here anyhow).


EXHIBIT A: Three years of banging C5 at back. 5 visits to different dealers in UK and France with nothing found, three occassions and then antiroll bar on the FRONT blamed and changed (£££) the other. Only on last visit did one person suggest rear trailing arm (After I mentioned it following you guys advice). Was advised by this garage that car may be knackered due to wear.

Went to another specialist Citroen garage (not dealer this time) who agreed and advised me to buy new C5 "cos they cost hardly anything, £500 cos nobody wants them".

Found another garage who identified and fixed straight away, even reducing price from quote. Only he's miles away and in the middle of puplic transport desert. SO YES AN APPARENTLY GOOD GARAGE!!!

EXHIBIT B: Right AFTER this 3 year problem was sorted (within days) sods law intervened and the engine management light came on and power disappeared at speed. Taken to local garage who put on computer. Was booked in, they had a look and said they couldn't find actual fault and advised that we had to wait until something bigger came along before they could fix it (£££).

EXHIBIT C: Bought new car to offset this knackered car now making horrible noises. BUT the coolant goes (God doesn't trust me with cars obviously).

Taken to garage (dealer in France) who could find nothing wrong (£££). Still had to top up again twice and so took to same local garage as before who tested but found nothing.

ADVICE: have to wait until the head gasket or matrix really go to be able to do something about it. Had to top up twice since then (£££).

Coolant still disappearing (going to Halfords today to get another 5 litre tub)and car teetering on possible knackered head gasket ???? (I'm not a mechanic, I don't know)

What are the experiences of everyone else? Am I just being inflammatory or do most, some, or all garages simply suck? (Garage owners here accepted, don't kill me)



The money going out on such non-committal crap is unreal.


So do garages suck or am I just moaning? How easy have you guys found a good garage that you trust?

How about starting a list of good garages for everyone's reference.
Last edited by boristhespie on 16 Jan 2010, 13:56, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Stempy »

I don't think it's garages per se, I think it's just the general don't give a shoot, I'm all right jack attitude that seems to be the norm these days. All people seem to want to do is charge as much as they can to do as little as possible. It's why the world is in the state it's in, everyone's in it for themselves with little regard for their fellow citizens.
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Post by HDI »

Yes , most Garages are pants , but the reasons are not what you might expect.
Making money out of the Garage trade is difficult and becoming increasingly so. Main stealers only really want to be bothered with cars under warranty. That means they can't really lose. Anything older , dirty or horrible turns up they will more often than not quote themselves out of the job so they don't get it the business , anyone mug enough to accept the inflated quote is covering their pi55off factor and then some.

Independents don't want hassle business because they can't afford the trouble of a awkward or nasty job coming back because it wasn't repaired properly. They only want easy money.

Very , very , very few garages actually give a stuff about the customer , they just want the difficult jobs to go away.

Unfortunately , hydraulic Citroens fall into the hassle category for most garages , they just don't wanna know !!

Briefly I was in the motor trade , as a specialist in Mitsubishi Evo's. My problem was I am a perfectionist and it was difficult to make money because of that. Customers rang around for quotes and then tried to get me to match the lowest price. Problem was , they were not comparing like for like. The cheapo guys just didn't care how they did the job , where as I would do it by the book perfect without corner cutting or bodging. Eventually I just had enough of it and closed it. Still work on my own cars and certain friends , at my pace and when I want to , courtesy of a friend who lets me use his workshop. Never again as a business though.
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Post by Peter.N. »

The problem is not so much with garages as the ridiculous obsession that manufacturers have with technology, the average mechanic can't possibly have experienced every fault that could occur and therefore has to find it by trial and error. There are a few garages that are mustard with electronincs - but its finding one, I only know of a couple round here, one is on a farm and the other is the 'local' diesel specialist - about 15 miles away.

I was in the TV trade all of my working life and in the early days I could repair practically anything, , I wouldn't attempt a modern TV.

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Post by Citroenmad »

Are garages CRAP?
YES.

Very very few are actually any good in my experience. Anything seems too much to ask and very few people seem interested in their job, so give very poor service.

I could write a lengthy book on my experiences, just totally shocking, mainly main dealers i find to be the worst.


I like to do as much as i can, only for bigger things i use garages, and then its usually the same one which im almost willing to trust!

What was the result of your knocking at the back of your C5 Boristhespie?
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boristhespie
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Post by boristhespie »

Was rear trailing arm bearing. Was knackered. Banged about on it, to and from north scotland to south france even for THREE years! Had it seen to when it started and throughout and yes it was main dealers who let me down. I found a specialist and he got the parts in and had it done no problem. Even after 3 years there was no wear to the bearing seat and I know if there was so much a scuff the dealer would have made the most of it. They did say it may be better getting a new car!

Unfortunately specialist is so far away I can't get to and from to drop off car which I need for work.
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Post by lexi »

If a garage is very good it will be expensive....it has to be. Small businesses have to charge with one eye on the quiet times they will have. That is a fact in any business when rates are worked out. Service and business are very often two different things.

Just as a bus service with no people on bus has to be subsidised, service businesses have to charge for these quiet periods.

Make no mistake though.........it is a horrible trade IME. Wrong parts sent out due to minefield of model changes. Numptys who get their car Motd then come back complaining of a misfire or flat batterey or some other stupid stuff.

Come on guys....dealing with the public?..........it`s a nightmare :shock:

Now add the cowboy factor and lots of Journeyman who have no interest or responsibility . Then businesses who charge what they think customer will stand and whadya got?..........The Circus :lol: :lol:
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Post by Sid_the_Squid »

In my experience it is hard to find a decent garage. Especially if you own a Citroen!

Thankfully after much searching I have found a decent Citroen garage, who I can fully recommend. B&L Autos in WGC http://www.blautos.co.uk/ I cannot say enough how impressed I am after being in the hands of some of my past garages, these guys love Citroens, and even better than that most rare of rare things a UK garage who understands automatics! They are also famous for their RHD V6 Activa conversions and excellent customer service!

I'm in no way affiliated with the above, just a happy customer.
Sadly not directly helpful to you Boris, but what I'm attempting to illustrate is that decent garages do exits, if only in the minority.
If a garage is very good it will be expensive....it has to be
I understand what your saying, but will point out that this is not always the case, a bad garage can frequently be more expensive, as they don't know all optimal routes for fixing items. As all of us on this forum know there are tips and tricks when working on Citroens (as with any car) which can make a job much shorter, a good garage will know this, thus they may be very competitive on their pricing compared, even to the point of being cheaper, than a lower hourly rate cowboy garage would be.
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Post by lexi »

Yes Sid I agree that specialist garages are best. I know garages who turn over £1 million every year and would hardly know what to do with a CIT............ but most garages do not pass savings onto customers....that is their profit. If a clutch change is 8 hrs book and you do it in 5......8hrs is charged. If you price the customer a Stealer part at £100 and then you spend 20mins on the phone to get aftermarket at £60 then that is £40 profit. These are the "smart" tools that businesses use rightly or wrongly.

The other thing is that sometimes the job is only as good as the guys working for you. Even the responsible owner cannot watch everything and lots of stuff will go out without his name on it so to speak. It`s common to get great service and then a few bad jobs because of this.
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Post by skog77 »

Over here Citroen dealerships has a bad reputation amongst enthusiasts. One of the best hydraulics specialists among the Citroen enthusiast crowd here has to help them out now and again to figure out problems.

I guess the most scary example is a car that was at a dealership for three months before this guy had to come in and help them. Turns out the owner had put diesel in it instead of petrol, but the garage insisted that wasnt the case because the fuel smelled petrol. That is, until you put it on a rag and let it be for two minutes. Petrol vaporized, diesel was left. They needed an outside person to figure that out. (The owner ofcourse insisted he had put petrol in it, cause only morons put diesel in petrol cars).
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Post by Xaccers »

Back when I was at college and uni, I used to take my 205 to the local garage which dad swore by.
Every service or so the car needed new brake lines as they were pitted, and CV boots.
With my 2nd 205 it had a fuel leak from the sender, although I didn't know that's what it was back then, I just knew if I filled the tank up, diesel would pour out.
Gave them the symptoms, they had the car 3 times saying they found nothing wrong, charging labour of course.
Turns out they'd ignored what I'd told them and were looking for a leak on the fuel lines.
I got home fuming, bought a Haynes manual, found where the fuel sender was under back seat and it just needed tightening.
The only times since then that I've taken cars to garages to have them do work has been when under warranty.
Mate of mine used to be a mechanic, and turns out not a very good one. He worked for Ford, then Land Rover.
They thought he was great at LR because he could get jobs done so quickly by cutting corners (which they encouraged to some extent), until they found out just how big the corners he was cutting were!

This is one of the reasons why so many Xantias have never had their LHM changed or hydroflush used, or their non-corner spheres changed, despite it being part of a service that the customer is paying for.
You can fit a lot more jobs into the day if you only do the bits of a service that the driver will notice.

A Vauxhall garage a colleague's parents used to take their Cavalier to set their alarm bells ringing with previous services, so they marked the oil filter.
After paying the bill, they checked and saw the oil filter hadn't been changed so complained.
"Ah, sometimes the oil filter doesn't need changing sir" they were told.
"So why did you charge us for a new one" they replied.
Refund and a free service which they watched done was what they got and never returned.
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Post by Bren »

I have had some shocking experiences with garages - some of them should'nt be trusted with a spanner. On the other hand, it must be a nightmare at times trying to please the public, especially the ones who are ignorant of all things mechanical - some of which seem to expect you do jobs and not make any profit.
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Post by Peter.N. »

I suppose I can't really comment with any authority as I have been repairing my own cars since the '39 Prefect that I bought in 1956. I did used to know a number of mechanics back then though and they were all good, but, as I said earlier, the cars were nothing like as complicated then.

Most workers had much more commitment in those days, mechanics included and they stood or fell on their reputation, largely because people in general had nothing like as much money as they have now so generally garages couldnt take them for a ride (no pun intended), a bad reputation was soon earned. there are a lot more people with a lot more cars now. I have no doubt that many garages are less than honest and/or have a don't care attitude, the customer will pay whether we fix it or not.

This was never the case in the TV trade, if we didn't fix it, we didn't get paid, and in the early days a TV cost nearly as much as a car.

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Post by Citroenmad »

I can only recall a few times which i have been happy with work carried out by garages. Often they have damaged the cars, not done the job properly, not done what it wanted or not had a clue.

Now im not an expert on mechanical things, i know basics but thats it. So i only ever do basics myself. Cambelts etc i put the car into a garage for, but servicing, brakes etc i do myself.

A few years ago when my Seat was only 2 years old and had only 20K miles it developed a misfire, it would nearly only run on 3 cylinders when it was hot, use extreme amounts of fuel and was very slow, as you can imagine it owuld be with a cylinder failing.

I had taken it to a few garages which i know who said its more than likely a hydraulic valve lifter sticking. I had a cylinder leakage test done and took these reults along to the dealer where i expalined what i had been told. They never even looked into this though ...

The dealer skimmed the head - TWICE!, played with the valves, cylinder etc. Left the engine open to the dusty industrial estate while the head was removed, it just went on and on, for 3 and a half months. I did have a loan car though, but that was a problem in itself.

I got onto SeatUK who was actually quite helpful, they monitored the progress of the dealer and eventually requested to the dealer that it should have a new engine fitted. Which it did and i was very happy with this, as i really didnt want it back with the engine they had been playing around with.

However i went to drive the car with its new engine in, the car was filthy, the front bumper was badly scuffed and damaged, the front alloy was curbed, the drivers side wheel bearing had gone and was droning like crazy. So a week later i picked it up, it had the bearing done but had to go back for the bodywork to be repaired, i was gutted, it should not have been damaged.

However the probelms didnt end there, while doing the bearing they had somehow bent the hub, so the brake discs would distort in no time. They wouldnt admit to this and i had to pay to have a new hub fitted. The tracking was a mile out and i had to have that adjusted.

We still have it, its our little town car now so only does very few miles, its an 03 reg with 43K miles on now, im still amased it had to have a new engine so early in its life, if they had known what they were doing it would never have needed one and i would not have been without my car for any longer than a week or two, not 3 months!

You would have thought i would have forgot about dealers by then, especially this one, but i did continue to use it until the warranty was up. For a few months the car was back at the garage almost every 2 weeks for a couple of days to have things sorted out which they had broken, not fixed or not attatched when the had the car in for the 3 months. As a result i have driven all of the Seat car range as ive had so many flipping loan cars. One of those went wrong too, another was damaged by someone crashing into it when i had it, could have happened with my cqar but its worse with a loan car. The new Leon had just come out, so i had that, someone damaged it while it was parked and left. I didnt want to go through my insurance so i was left with a £450 bill for its repairs. All hassle i didnt need! Though that was not the dealers fault but they should not have needed my car back so many times just to correct their mistakes.

Renault dealers are no better however, they fitted our car with used parts from another car they had in, they damaged it quite badly, they were very unwilling to help about any problems (renaults often have many, as ours did)

Dont even get me started on VW dealers, 3 times they painted our VW and its still not right yet, i would have got a better paint finish had i painted it myself with a rattle can while being in the middle of a beach! The grit and crap that was under the paint was unreal.

I really dislike dealers, i have no time for them anymore, i have many many more bad experiences with them and find most of them useless and unwilling to help. Might be harsh but i couldnt expect anything more going by the expereinces ive had.

I could go on and on, but this is already a long post which ive just cut down as i got carried away :lol:

Which is why i like doing things to my cars myself now, i really dont trust garages or dealers to be working on them, id rather do it myself and know its done.
Last edited by Citroenmad on 16 Jan 2010, 22:03, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by addo »

Here, formal instruction for apprentices is too "channelled". Training is delivered in modules, and there is no effort made to teach people about seeing the whole package, or using complementary skills (eyes and ears, especially). It's been this way long enough now, that the truly competent people are a distinct minority.

Most new cars are still designed for a degree of service by an intelligent operator without specific training. The fact that so many stuff this up, is inexcusable.

As cars have grown in complexity, the range of "services" expected of a mechanic has increased. They now have to troubleshoot a lot of creature comforts in addition to overall mechanical servicing.

As mentioned before, I do some mechanicking and the picky jobs are ones assigned to me. There's not really the chargeable time for a super-neat finish (parts all washed and cleaned etc) but I do address peripheral issues like missing fasteners or unsecured cabling. The boss has too much time for bludgers (as opposed to those genuinely struggling) - I'd crush their cars!

Cheers, Adam.
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